Computer devices are becoming ever more ubiquitous, and more and more of people's day-to-day activities involve computer devices. During the course of a day, a user may carry out many activities using one or more computer devices—such as watching videos, listening to music, browsing the web, using a chat or communication program, working on a document or presentation, or playing a game, among others. Over time, a user may wish to resume or revisit an activity they previously engaged in. However, it may be difficult for a user to remember all of the details necessary to resume that activity.
In many cases, a user may be concurrently carrying out multiple activities using even a single computer device. Increasingly, people desire and need to carry out activities involving, and between, multiple computer devices. For example, a user may work on a single task, or multiple interrelated tasks, such as a work project, using multiple different computer devices, such as a smartphone, work desktop computer, laptop computer, and home desktop computer. A user may start watching an entertainment program or playing a game on their laptop computer, but may wish to continue watching or playing on their smartphone or tablet computer at a later time. A user may start researching a topic on the web at work on their desktop computer, and continue their research on a smartphone or tablet computer during their commute home.
As computer devices are used for a larger number of tasks, and become more integrated into people's lives, it can become challenging for a user to track their activities and associated content. For example, a user may wish to access a web page the user browsed two days earlier, but may not remember the address of the web page, or how they found it, or even which browser or device they were using to view the page. A user may have been listening to a song on their computer device, or watching a video, but may no longer remember the title of the song or video. A user may have been working on a document, but may no longer remember where that document was stored, or how to access it again.
In some cases, a computer device, such as an individual application running on the computer device or an operating system of the computer device, may provide some limited functionality for a user to try and trace their activity. For example, an operating system component may allow the user to view of a list of recently created or modified files. A web browser may allow a user to access a history of web pages visited by the user. However, such functionality is typically limited to a single application or domain.
However, at least certain information regarding activities, such as files opened by a user, but not modified by the user, may not be available to the user. Even when information is available, the specific information in which the user is interested may be intermixed with voluminous amounts of other information. For instance, the address of a web page a user wants to find may be intermixed with information for scores of other web pages the user visited on a particular day. If the user cannot remember the particular day they visited the web page, the task becomes even more challenging and frustrating. Thus, room for improvement remains for tracking a user's activities on one or more computer devices and making the information easily and intelligently accessible to the user.